Kitabı oku: «The Late Tenant», sayfa 2
It was now late in the afternoon. He strolled down Tottenham Court Road into Holborn, ate a deferred luncheon in Oxford-St., and started to saunter back home, shirking a theater matinée, which was irksome since it was the fixed thing on his program. But it struck him half-way home that his charwoman was gone, that the flat was lonely; he got into a cab, saying to the driver: “Kensal Green cemetery!”
Some electric lamps were a-flicker already in the streets. It was nearly the hour at which London roars loudest, when the city begins to pour out its hordes, and vans hurry to their bourne, with blocks in the traffic, and more haste, less speed. When he reached the cemetery the closing time was imminent.
A little snow lay among the graves, through which the grass-tufts showed, making a ground of black-and-white. Some few stars had ventured to peep from the wintry sky. A custodian supplied David with the formal information which he sought. The plot of ground had been bought in perpetuity; it was in a shaded place a good distance from the entrance; an Iona cross, erected by friends, marked the spot, bearing the one word, “Gwendoline.”
“It is late, sir,” said the man. But mighty is the power of the tip, even in cemeteries.
David walked down an avenue of the dead toward the little mound that covered the young actress. He was perhaps twenty yards from it when he heard and almost stopped at the sound of a sob not far away. He looked on this hand and on that, but could see no one. The place, with its silent populace, was more lonesome than the prairie; and a new sense had been steadily growing up in him since half-past eleven of the previous night – the sense of the “other world,” of its possible reality and nearness. There was an odor here, strong enough to his keen nostrils, of flowers, especially of violets, and of the last end of mortal man, a blend of sweet and abhorrent which was to infect his mind for many a day. However, he did not hesitate, but, with slower steps, that made hardly a sound, turned a corner of the path, cleared a clump of trees which had blocked his view, and now saw the grave of Gwendoline, the cross, the chaplet of fresh violets at the foot of the cross, and over the cross a woman weeping.
Weeping bitterly, her face in her hands, she was standing, but her body was bent in grief, and she was all shaken with it, though little sound escaped that lonely passion of pity and heartbreak. Harcourt at once felt that he had invaded holy ground. He gave himself time to notice only that she was tall, cloaked wholly in black – and he turned, or half-turned, to retire.
But in his haste and embarrassment he let his stick fall from his hand; whereat the young woman started, and they looked at each other.
In an instant Harcourt understood that she was the sister of her whose portrait stood on his mantelpiece; and he felt that he had never seen woman so lovely and gentle.
CHAPTER III
VIOLET
She looked at Harcourt with wide eyes, seeming frightened, in suspense, and ready to fly, because he did not know how his eyes devoured her.
“I am sorry – ” he began, retiring a step.
“What do you want of me?” she asked, staring fixedly at him.
“Nothing,” he said. “Don’t be alarmed; I am merely here by chance.”
“But why have you followed me?”
“No, I have not followed you, I assure you of that. I did not know that you were here, even. I beg you not to be alarmed – ”
“Why, then, are you here?” she persisted.
“This is a public cemetery, you know. I came to see a grave, just as you have – ”
“This grave?”
“How can you possibly guess that,” he asked, “since you have never before seen me, and do not know who I am?”
“You stopped here, did you not?” she asked. “You stopped, and looked strangely at me.”
“Certainly I looked at you,” admitted Harcourt. “I did not realize that I looked ‘strangely.’ However, let me be frank. I did come to see your sister’s grave.”
“My sister!” said she, shrinking, as from the touch of a wound, “how do you know? what interest can you have strong enough to bring you?”
“Not such a very strong interest,” he answered. “I am here merely to fill an idle hour, and because I happen to be occupying the flat in which your sister died. There is that link between her and me; she has moved in the same little home, looked from the same windows, slept in the same room, as I, poor girl.”
She suddenly looked up from the ground, saying: “May I ask how long you have been there?”
“This is only the second day,” he answered with a reassuring smile.
“Your interest in her has been sudden.”
“But her crayon portrait is there over my dining-room mantelpiece, and it is an interesting one. The moment I saw you I understood that you are her sister.”
“You must have known that she had a sister.”
“Why, yes, I knew.”
“Who told you that, pray?”
Her manner had now changed from one of alarm to one of resentment, of mistrust. Her questions leaped from her as from a judge eager to condemn.
“Surely it was no secret that she had a sister,” he said. “The agent happened to mention it in speaking to me of the late tenant, as agents do.”
“Ah, no doubt,” she said half to herself. “You all are ready enough with explanations. Wise as serpents, if not harmless as doves.”
The last words were spoken with a break in her voice and a look that went to Harcourt’s heart. He understood that he was in the presence here of the strange, of a mind touched to wildness by a monstrous grief, and needing delicate handling.
“What I have told you is only the truth,” he said gently.
“Ah, no doubt,” she said again. “But did you know the history of the flat before you went into it?”
“Why, yes.”
“Yet you went. What, then, was your motive?”
“Ah, now, come,” said he. “I can see that you are on a wrong track, and I must try to set things right. Your sister has perhaps been badly treated by some one or more persons, and the notion has occurred to you that I may be one of them, or may have some knowledge even of one of them. But I have been in England only a month; I come from Wyoming, a place at the other end of creation. See if you can’t catch a hint of an accent in my speech. I never saw your sister alive; I am quite a stranger in London. It is not nice to be mistrusted.”
She thought this over gravely, then said with a moment’s openness of heart: “Forgive me, if I give you pain unjustly”; but at once again she changed, muttering stubbornly to herself with a certain vindictiveness: “If I mistrust you, it is not for nothing. I suppose you are all about equally pitiless and deadly. There she lies, low enough, dead, undone – so young – Gwen! was there no pity, no help, not even God to direct, not even God?”
Again she covered her face, and was shaken with grief, while Harcourt, yearning, but not daring to stir a step toward her, stood in pain; till presently she looked up at him sharply with all the former suspiciousness, saying with here a sob and there a sob: “But, after all, words are only words. You can all talk, I dare say; yet you have not been able to give me any valid explanation.”
“Of what?” he asked.
“Of your strange interest in this lady; of your presence here over her grave; of the fact that you chose to occupy the flat, knowing what you know of it. In my mind these are points against you.”
He could not help smiling. “Let me reason with you,” said he earnestly. “Remember that I am not the first person who has occupied the flat since the death of your sister. Did not a Miss L’Estrange have it before me? Well, my motive is precisely the same as hers – I wanted somewhere to live. You did not attribute to Miss L’Estrange any ulterior motive, I think? Then why attribute one to me?”
“I attribute nothing to any one,” she sighed. “I merely ask for an explanation which you seem unable to give.”
“Think, now! Have I not given it? I say that I wanted a flat and took this one. Don’t mistrust me for nothing!”
“Oh, I keep a perfectly open mind. Till things are proved to me, I mistrust no one. But you make your excuses with rather too much earnestness to be convincing; for you would not care what I thought, if you had no motive.”
“My motive is simply a desire to stand well with you,” said David. “You won’t punish me for that?”
Now for the first time she looked squarely at him, her eyes meditating gravely upon his face, as she said: “If you never knew my sister before, it was good of you to come to her grave. You do not look like one of the ruthless ones.”
“No, I hope not. Thank you for saying that,” said David, with his eyes on the ground. He was shy with women. Such a girl as this filled a shrine in his presence.
“And yet, who can ever tell?” she sighed, half to herself, with a weary drop of the hand. “The world seems so hopelessly given over to I don’t know what. One would say that men were compounded of fraud and ill-will, so that one does not know whom to trust, nor even if there is any one to be trusted. You go into the flat without any motive apparently that you can give. You would never have managed it, if I had had my way!”
“Is it against your will that the flat has been let?” asked David.
“That is not your business, you know!” she said, quickly resentful of probing questions.
“I only asked,” said he, “in order to tell you that if it was against your will, you have only to breathe a wish, and I shall find the means to leave it.”
“Well, surely that is kindly said,” she answered. “Forgive me, will you, if I seem unreasonable? Perhaps you do not know what grief is. I will tell you that it is against my will that the flat has been let. My mother’s doing; she insisted because she suspected that I had a tendency to – be drawn toward the spot; she feared that I might – go there; and so it was let. But it is useless, I suppose, for you to give it up. They would only let it to some one else. And whoever was in it, I should have the same suspicions – ”
That word! “Suspicions of what?” asked David. “I am so much in the dark as to what you mean! If you would explain yourself, then I might be able to help you. Will you let me help you?”
“God knows what the truth is,” she said despondently, staring downward afresh, for, when David looked at her, her eyes fell. “They are all kind enough at first, no doubt, and their kindness ends here, where the grass grows, and the winds moan all night, Gwen. I do not know who or what you are, sir,” she added, with that puzzling sharpness, “or what your motive may be; but – what have you done with my sister’s papers?”
“Papers?” said David. “You surprise me. Are there any papers of your sister’s in the flat?”
She looked keenly at him, with eyelids lowered, seeking to read his mind as though it was an open book.
“Who knows?” said she.
He recalled his harmless conversational dodge with Dibbin. He could have smiled at the thought; but he only answered: “Surely all her papers have been removed?”
“Who knows?” she said again, eying him keenly.
“Certainly, I have seen no papers!” he exclaimed.
“Well, you seem honest.”
“I hope so.”
“If you did happen to find any papers in the flat, they would not be your property, would they?”
“Of course not!”
“What would you do with them?”
“I should give them to you.”
“God grant that you are honest!” she sighed. “But how would you find me?”
“If you give me your name and address – ”
“My name is Violet Mordaunt,” she said rapidly, as if venturing against some feeling of rashness. “My home is at Rigsworth in Warwickshire, near Kenilworth; but I am for the present in London, at – ”
Before she could mention her London address they were both aware that a third person was with them. The light carpet of snow would not have deadened the newcomer’s approach to David’s ears, were it not that he was so absorbed in the words, the looks, the merest gestures of his companion. David heard the girl say; “Oh, Mr. Van Hupfeldt!” and a man walked past him to the grave with lifted hat. The man and Violet Mordaunt shook hands. It was now getting dark; but David could still see that the newcomer was an uncommonly handsome person, turned out with faultless elegance from his glossy beaver to the tip of his verni boots; of dark, sallow skin; and a black mustache as daintily curled as those mustaches which one sees in the costumers’ windows. David stepped back a little, and stood awkwardly. Beside this West End dandy he felt that he was somewhat of a rough-rider, and, like most young men dowered with both brain and sinew, he fancied that women incline more readily to the trimly dressed popinjay of society. Yet Violet Mordaunt seemed anything but pleased at the interruption.
“I am come to look for you by the request of your mother,” David heard the stranger say. “It was feared that you might be here, and I am to take you home, if you will do me the honor to come in my carriage.”
“But I ought not to be tracked,” said Violet, with the quick petulance which already was music for David.
“There is the question of tea and dinner,” remarked Van Hupfeldt. “If a lady will not eat, she must expect to be plagued.”
“I prefer to walk home.”
“That couldn’t be done; it is too far,” said Van Hupfeldt. “Oh, come, come!” he went on pleadingly, with a fond gaze into her eyes.
A minute afterward they left the grave together. Van Hupfeldt, as he passed David on the path, frowned momentarily; Violet slightly inclined her head.
He looked after them, and admitted to himself that they made a handsome pair, tall, like children of the gods. But three yards away after they had passed him something fell from Violet – a card – whether by accident or design David did not know; but the thought that it might be by design sent a thrill through his frame. He picked it up. It had on it the address of a boarding-house in Porchester Gardens.
He was yet tingling with the hope of meeting her again when a custodian approached. “Must shut the gates, sir,” he said.
And the clang of iron brought David back to the roadway and reality once more.
CHAPTER IV
“JOHANN STRAUSS”
On Monday morning David made the acquaintance of the genus “housekeeper,” when the woman recommended by Dibbin arrived to take him in hand. He had thought that she would sleep in the place, and had rather looked forward to the human companionship, for nothing is more cut off from the world of the living than a flat, if one is alone in it, especially through the watches of the night. Surely, if there are ghosts in want of undisturbed house-room, every bachelor’s flat must be haunted.
Mrs. Grover, the housekeeper, however, said that “sleeping in” was not the arrangement suggested to her by Dibbin, since there were “the children to be looked after.” David, for his part, would not let it appear that he cared at all; so Mrs. Grover, a busy little fat woman, set to work making things rattle, on an understanding of “sleeping out” and freedom for church services o’ Sunday.
This Monday was David’s appointed day for beginning work. But he did not prosper very well. Plenty of paper, lots of ink, and a new gold pen make no Shakespeare. And it is always hard to begin, even when the mind does not wander. But Violet Mordaunt had brown eyes, so soft, so grave, as those that beam with pity over the dying. She was more beautiful than her sister, whose face, too, David could see through the back of his head. Also, Van Hupfeldt was undoubtedly a more elegant object for the eye of woman to rest upon than David Harcourt.
David wondered if Van Hupfeldt was engaged to Violet. He had certainly spoken to her at the grave with much tender gallantry of manner, as if something was understood between them. And since Violet’s mother sent this man to seek her in his carriage, that must mean that they were on familiar terms; unless, indeed, the mother was pressingly anxious about Violet, could not go herself, and had no one else to win the young woman home from her sister’s grave. Such questionings were the cause of long pauses between the writing of David’s sentences. He was glad when something interrupted – when the bell rang, and Dibbin was ushered in.
“I have looked in for one minute on the subject of that – grate,” said the agent. “Do not disturb yourself, I beg. Well, I see that Mrs. Grover is duly in her place, and you as snug here as a bird in its nest.”
“So snug,” said David, “that I feel stifled. It beats me how people can get so accustomed to this sort of prison as not even to remember any longer that they are in prison. No air, no room to stretch, coal-dust in your very soul, and even at night in your bed!”
“Dash it all, don’t say it.”
“Say what?”
“Were you about to refer to any fresh experiences?”
“Of the ghost? Not a bit of it!” said David. “I have seen, heard, or smelled nothing more of anything.”
“Good, good!” went on Dibbin, softly. “Keep on like that, and we shall pull through yet. I find you are well stocked with violets, meantime.”
David laughed a little uneasily, and said “Yes” – no more. Whiffs of violets in a lonely flat, for which one can’t account, are not altogether pleasant things. David had therefore surrounded himself with violets, in order, when he was greeted with a scent of violets, to be able to say to himself that the scent came from those which he had bought. He had not admitted even to himself what his motive was in buying; nor would he admit it to Mr. Dibbin. There, however, the violets were in several pots, and their fragrance at once drew the notice of a visitor, for the London florist has an art to heighten dull nature in violets and much else.
“Have a seat, Mr. Dibbin,” said David, “and let us talk.”
“I am afraid I must be off,” began the other.
“Well, have a B. and S. any way. I only want to hear from you whatever you can tell me of Mrs. and Miss Violet Mordaunt.”
“What? You have discovered their names?” cried Dibbin with a start.
“I have.”
“Mr. Harcourt, you are a remarkable man,” said the agent with quiet certainty.
“Oh, not too remarkable. But since I do know something, you might let yourself loose as to the rest, as I am interested. You have seen the mother, I know. Have you seen the daughter, too?”
“Several times.”
“Pretty girl, eh? Or what do you think?”
“Well, I am getting an old man now,” said Dibbin; “but I have been young, and I think I can remember how I should have felt at twenty-five in the presence of such a being.”
“Pretty, you think her, eh?”
“Rather!”
“Prettier than Gwendoline? Prettier than her sister?”
“Well, I don’t know so much about that neither – different type – graver, softer in the eye and hair, taller, darker, not so young; but that poor dead girl was something to make the mouth water, too, sir – such a cut diamond! to see her in her full war-paint, turned out like a daisy! – in short, lovely beings, both of ’em, both of ’em.”
“Fairly well fixed, the mother?”
“You mean financially? Oh, I think so. Got a fine place down in Warwickshire, I know – not far from Kenilworth. Good old family, and that sort of thing.”
“But how on earth this man Strauss, more or less an adventurer, I take it, could have got hold of such a girl, to the extent of drawing her from her happy home, and sending her on the stage. He didn’t marry her, Dibbin? He didn’t marry her?”
“How can I say?” asked Dibbin, blinking. “We can all make a shrewd guess; but one can’t be absolutely certain, though the fact of her suicide would seem to be a sort of proof.”
“What do the mother and Miss Mordaunt think of it? Do they assume that she was married? Or do they know enough of the world to guess that she was not? I suppose you don’t know.”
“They know what the world thinks, I’m afraid,” answered Dibbin. “I am sure of that much. Yes, they know, they know. I have been with Mrs. Mordaunt a good many times, for one reason or another. I can tell how she feels, and I’m afraid that she not only guesses what the world thinks, but agrees with the world’s view. On the other hand, I have reason to think that Miss Mordaunt has an obstinate faith in her sister, and neither believes that she died unmarried, nor even that she committed suicide. Well, well, you can’t expect much clear reasoning from a poor sister with a head half turned with grief.”
Dibbin tossed off his brandy, while David paced the room, his hands behind him, with a clouded brow.
“Have they no protector, these women?” he asked. “Isn’t Miss Mordaunt engaged?”
“I fancy not,” said the agent. “In fact, I think I can say undoubtedly not. She was not engaged before the death of her sister, I am certain; and this disaster of her sister appears to have inspired the poor girl with such a detestation of the whole male sex – ”
“Do you happen to know who a certain Mr. Van Hupfeldt is?” asked David.
“Van Hupfeldt, Van Hupfeldt? No, never heard of him. What of him?”
“He seems to be a pretty close friend of the Mordaunts, if I am right.”
“He may be a close friend, and yet a new one,” said Dibbin, “as sometimes happens. Never heard of him, although I thought that I knew the names of most of Mrs. Mordaunt’s connections, either through herself or her solicitors.”
“But to go back to this Strauss,” said David. “Do you mean to say that neither the mother nor Miss Mordaunt ever once saw him?”
“Not once that they know of.”
“Then, how did he get hold of Gwendoline?”
“That’s the question. It is suspected that he met her in the hunting-field, persuaded her to meet him secretly, and finally won her to fly from home. To me this is quite credible; for I’ve seen Johann Strauss twice, and each time have been struck with the thought how fascinating this man must be in the eyes of a young woman!”
“What was he like, then, this Mr. Johann Strauss of the flourishy signature?”
“A most handsome young man,” said Mr. Dibbin, impressively; “hard to describe exactly. Came from the States, I think, or had lived there – had just a touch of the talk, perhaps – of Dutch extraction, I take it. Handsome fellow, handsome fellow; the kind of man girls throw themselves over precipices after: teeth flashing between the wings of his black mustache – tall, thin man, always most elegantly dressed – dark skin – sallow – ”
At that word “sallow,” David started, the description of Johann Strauss had so strangely reminded him of Van Hupfeldt! But the thought that the cause of the one sister’s undoing should be friendly with the other sister, paying his court to her over the grave of the ill-fated dead, was too wild to find for itself a place all at once in the mind.
David frowned down the notion of such a horror. He told himself that it was dark when he had seen Van Hupfeldt, that there were many tall men with white teeth and black mustaches, and sallow, dark skins. If he had felt some sort of antipathy to Van Hupfeldt at first sight, this was no proof of evil in Van Hupfeldt’s nature, but a proof only, perhaps, of David’s capabilities of being jealous of one more favored than himself by nature as he fancied – and by Violet Mordaunt, which was the notion that rankled.
And yet he tingled. Dibbin had said that this Van Hupfeldt might be “a new friend – one who had become a friend since the death of Gwendoline.”
David paced the room with slow steps, and while Dibbin talked on of one or another of the people who had known Gwendoline Mordaunt in the flesh, vowed to himself that he would take this matter on his shoulders and see it through.
“Speaking of the Miss L’Estrange who was in the flat before me,” said he; “how long did she stay in it?”
“Three months, nearly,” answered Dibbin, “and then all of a sudden she wouldn’t stay another day. And I had no means of forcing her to do so either.”
“What? Did the ghost suddenly get worse?”
“I couldn’t quite tell you what happened. Miss Ermyn L’Estrange isn’t a lady altogether easy to understand when in an excited condition. Suffice it to say, she wouldn’t stay another hour, and went off with a noise like a catherine-wheel.”
“Quite so. But I say, Dibbin, can you give me the address of the lady?”
“With pleasure,” said the agent, in whom brandy and soda acted as a solvent. “I am a man, Mr. Harcourt, with three hundred and odd addresses in my head, I do assure you. But, then, Miss L’Estrange is a bird of passage – ”
“All right, just write down the address that you know; and there is one other address that I want, Mr. Dibbin – that of the girl who acted as help to Miss Gwendoline Mordaunt.”
Dibbin had known this address also, and with the promise to see if he could find it among his papers – for it was he who had recommended the girl – went away. He was hardly gone when Harcourt, who did not let the grass grow under his feet, put on hat and coat, and started out to call upon Miss Ermyn L’Estrange.
